thoughts on agility and agile leadership

Month: February 2017

“You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work.” – Laurie McIntosh

This weekend I had to run some errands and I arrived at a local business just as they were opening to pickup a delivery. I stopped at the drive up window, rang the bell and patiently waited. A clerk came rushing in sat her items down and opened the window … “Name”, she asked sharply to which I provided her my name. She fumbled around and said in a tone as if a burden were being placed upon her “We just opened. It will be at least 30-45 minutes”. I thanked her and said I would return in about an hour. She closed the window and walked away.

As I drove to another place where I could occupy an hour (as returning home and then coming back would be pointless due to the drive) I began to think about customer service. Not about this particular incident specifically but what “customer service” really means. Customer service is defined on the interwebs as “the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.”

This being the case, on face value, this woman provided customer service as she indicated how long I should expect before my delivery was prepared, correct? Sure, she absolutely met the definition of “assistance and advice”. But did she delivery it in a way that made me happy to be a customer? I would say not. Her rush into work and exacerbation from that experience translated to how she provided that customer service. I get that we are all human and are affected by life’s experiences but sometimes in the service of others we have to rise above all that. Easy to do, no. But something we should think about in terms of customer service.

The reason I began thinking of this as it made me reflect on a story I had read about Zappos and its early beginnings. One of the values that Tony Hsieh strives to instill in each and every employee is the ideal of amazing customer service as the experience from that places an imprint on people that make them want to return and do business again.

When his company was first starting out, he was courting all of the major shoe manufacturers to stock his warehouse (as they learned that controlling the shipping timelines was another way to maintain a good customer experience) with their brands so he could provided diversity and brand loyalty names. On one particular case, he had been out for dinner and a lot of drinks with a particular rep from a company and they returned to the hotel at the early hours of the morning. Tony had spent the night selling the representative of this manufacturer on the core customer focus that Zappos had and how their superior customer service. The representative, probably a bit tipsy, told Tony that he wanted to see how “customer focused” his staff really were and if they were as he said, he had their account. Tony agreed to take that gamble.

The representative called Zappos, again in the wee hours of the morning, and got through to a customer service representative. The call center responder answered with zeal and said “This is Zappos, how may I help you”? The shoe representative said; “yes, I would like to order a pepperoni pizza please” in a tone of seriousness, fully expecting the call center to become angered and explain to him :”that is not what we do here sir”.

Instead, the call center representative said in a pleasant tone, “may I have your location sir”? The shoe manufacturer provided it to which the call representative stated “please hold one moment, sir”. The shoe manufacturer waited a moment and the call center came back on the line. “Sir, I apologize that we are unable to meet your need directly, however, based on the location you have provided to me, I have a list of local pizza shops that I can provide to you, the closest being open until 4 a.m. Is there any other way I can assist you sir?” Flabbergasted, the shoe representative took the number and thanks the call center representative. The call center representative closed the call by thanking the customer for their call.

Over a late night pizza, the shoe manufacturer gave Zappos their business.

This may be an urban legend, but it makes for a good story for sure it demonstrates to me what customer service really entails. The call center representative adapted to situation. They did not become frustrated because some intoxicated person called wanting to order a pizza, clearly not what they did. Instead, they used the situation to continue to provide excellent customer service and potentially establish a customer for tomorrow.

Isn’t that the core of customer service? Our goal is to “help the customer”. This is something that we cannot always do directly but if we go back to the definition of customer service as “the assistance and advice” this means that sometimes we help them by providing them with a direction, not a solution. We have to be willing to maintain that focus to help assist and advise even if out of scope. Does it take more time, sure. Does it mean we may have to try and find information that they could have found for themselves, absolutely. But being focused on customer service means you are there to guide that customer to solve that problem through your direct action or by helping them get a point of direction to that solution if at all possible.

So, coming back to my experience; did the lady provide customer service? Of course she did. She told me when I should return and my order would be ready. And when I returned, it was ready. I thanked her and went on my way.

Could she have left her frustration for being late for work out of the context of her customer interaction with me? Maybe. But that is an area for personal growth for her, not the basis upon which I judged if she provided the end customer service. I weighed this against the outcome. Her brief frustration did not make it a situation where I felt as though I received bad customer service. She was rushed from being late to work. It happens and as a result if we are faced with an immediate interaction, I cannot say that I would have handled it any better.

Are you “advising and assisting your customers” or just merely dealing with them?